Why anti-liberalism is on the rise worldwide — and how to fight back
Political stagnation and crisis have created an opportunity for anti-liberals with deep pockets to push a strategic, data-driven agenda
By the Editors of Kheiro Magazine
In the 102 days since U.S. Pres. Donald Trump took office, experts have identified a startling trend of liberal democracies being weakened across the globe.
From North America to Europe to Asia, in emerging democracies and politically stable countries alike, citizens are less and less concerned with a creeping authoritarianism exhibited by their elected leaders.
Until now, most of the analysis has been limited to a sort of political triage, assessing the damage and debating whether the bulwarks of western liberal democracy — the U.S. and Western Europe — can survive it.
But much of the punditry has failed to address the truly essential questions: Why is this happening, and what can be done to stop it? What connection, if any, exists between these global movements?
These questions require the sort of patience and thoughtfulness are that rarely rewarded in the 21st century media landscape. Entertainment, page views and “likes” — these are what carry the day. Distraction and disengagement are the major coping mechanisms for many.
Kheiro Magazine seeks to provide a different way forward. Its goal is to help readers stay informed but not overwhelmed, clear-eyed but not defeated.
To that end, a fundamental first step is to understand the rise of illiberal democracies worldwide: what they are, why they are so seductive, and what it will take to stop them.
Defining liberal versus illiberal democracy
Although the two are often conflated, democracy and liberalism are really two separate concepts. “Democracy” is a system of government in which the people elect their own leaders. “Liberalism” is a political philosophy that values individual freedom and rule of law.
A liberal democracy is therefore a “political system marked not only by free and fair elections, but also by the rule of law, a separation of powers, and the protection of basic liberties of speech, assembly, religion and property,” according to journalist Fareed Zakaria.
Zakaria is often credited with coining the term “illiberal democracy” in a groundbreaking article published in Foreign Affairs magazine in 1997. He observed that although a rise in democratic governance had generally coincided with a rise in liberalism throughout the 20th century, the two strands were “coming apart” in much of the world.
“Democratically elected regimes, often ones that have been reelected or reaffirmed through referenda, are routinely ignoring constitutional limits on their power and depriving their citizens of basic rights and freedoms,” he wrote.
Twenty years later, Zakaria and other experts have begun to revisit this concept in earnest. An illiberal democracy is one where citizens technically enjoy the right to vote, but by the time they make it to the ballot box the result has already been indirectly rigged in the incumbent or ruling party’s favor.
Anti-liberalism is a truly global trend
Today, Russia is perhaps the world’s most striking example of an illiberal democracy. Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin is hugely popular — and his United Russia party frequently wins elections — but this democratic success is only possible because of a lack of liberal institutions.
Putin’s stranglehold on power is the result of curbing a free press, controlling and limiting civil society, and curtailing the separation of powers with moves such as weakening regional elections.
But Putin’s Russia is not alone in this.
In the Philippines, democratically elected Pres. Rodrigo Duterte launched a “War on Drugs” that has resulted in thousands of extra-judicial killings and vigilante murders since June 2016. In Venezuela, Pres. Hugo Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, has jailed opposition leaders, while the nation’s Supreme Court tried to dissolve its legislature last month.
In Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has continued to strengthen his grip on the country, using a failed coup attempt to purge opposition figures from all levels of power. Last month he pushed through a constitutional referendum that gives him nearly unlimited executive powers.
Throughout much of the Middle East and Northern Africa, the Arab Spring’s promise of democracy has instead produced civil wars, a refugee crisis, and a new batch of autocrats, including Pres. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Egypt.
Even politically stable countries and political zones, such as the U.S. and E.U., are falling victim to anti-liberal trends.
In Western Europe, the U.K. has formally started the process of leaving the E.U., and Prime Minister Theresa May has called for an early election to try to prove that widespread electoral support exists for this “Brexit.” In France, the candidate proffered by a party founded by fascists has advanced to this Sunday’s general election.
And in the U.S., Trump’s first 100 days in office were marked by nepotism, corruption, disdain for institutional checks and balances, and public admiration for the world’s authoritarian rules.
He appointed his own daughter a federal employee with security clearance, and put his son-in-law — who has no experience in either foreign or domestic policy — in charge of everything from brokering peace in the Middle East, to leading U.S. relations with China and Mexico, to reorganizing the federal government, to ending the opioid epidemic in rural America.
His sons meanwhile are back in New York running the family business, which Trump has refused to divest from. He conducts expensive state business at his company’s commercial properties, and travels extensively on taxpayer money.
He has repeatedly attacked the courts, press and congressional rules designed to advance minority viewpoints. And he has cozied up to the world’s authoritarian rulers, congratulating Turkish president Erdoğan on that constitutional referendum, praising Egypt’s military dictator el-Sisi, and inviting Duterte to the White House despite his authorization of 7,000 murders and counting.
Why liberal governance matters
The pervasiveness of this anti-liberal trend might beg the question: if the people are happy with their choices, what difference does it make whether their democracies are liberal or illiberal? The answer is that in an illiberal democracy, what might start as a legitimate choice often spirals into consolidation and abuse of power.
As the examples above demonstrate, illiberal democracies are marked by corruption, press censorship, restrictions on speech and assembly, retribution against political and business opponents, and oppression of minorities.
And if and when the people do decide they’ve had enough, democratic institutions have been weakened to the point where it’s almost impossible to remove their strongmen leaders from power.
“What the new generation of populist-nationalists like Putin, Chávez in Venezuela, Erdoğan in Turkey, and [Viktor] Orbán in Hungary have done is to tilt the playing field to make sure they can never be removed from power in the future,” Stanford University researcher Francis Fukuyama wrote in an essay for Politico.
“The moment that the field is so tilted that accountability becomes impossible is when the system shifts from being a real liberal democracy to being an electoral authoritarian one.”
Fukuyama warns that “the process has already been underway for some time in America,” thanks to Republican gerrymandering of state legislatures and congressional districts, and the use of voter ID laws to disenfranchise potential Democratic voters.
Other experts such as Zakaria have described America’s descent into illiberal practice as “the most worrisome” of the illiberal shifts underway around the globe.
“Let’s be honest: What happens in Hungary is not likely to be a leading indicator of what’s happening in the world; it has little symbolic value,” he said in an interview with Vox.com in January. “But if the United States slides into illiberalism, that has a dramatic symbolic effect.”
Russia and the billionaire Mercer family are fueling anti-liberalism
Two things seem to be driving the rise of illiberalism worldwide: concern that the global political landscape is not adequately addressing legitimate problems such as inequality and lack of opportunity, and a group of actors exploiting those fears for their own gain.
In the U.S., where income inequality has become a defining issue, political stagnation has created an appetite for strongmen who can get things done, according to Fukuyama. In Europe, recovery from the global financial crisis has been slow, and political chaos in Northern Africa and the Middle East have created cross-border “neighborhood instability” in the form of the refugee crisis and terrorism.
In short, the past few years have seen a global leadership vacuum even in regions long dominated by liberal democratic institutions, including the United States and Western Europe. Anti-liberal forces have stepped in, exploiting the void for their own personal gain by encouraging citizens to conflate political ineffectiveness with the values underlying liberal democracy.
State actors such as Russia and politically active billionaires such as the Mercer family in the United States have seized on the distrust of institutions to further sow confusion and cynicism.
Russia, for its part, has supported extremist campaigns and secessionist movements in the U.S. and across Europe. Last year it hacked the Democratic National Committee in support of then-candidate Donald Trump, and faced virtually no consequences as a result.
“Moscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin-ordered campaign aimed at the U.S. presidential election to future efforts worldwide, including against U.S. allies and their election processes,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence warned in January.
Indeed that same month, the Sunday Telegraph reported that the Russians had been running “influence operations” — including misinformation campaigns — on elections in countries ranging from France, the Netherlands, Hungary, Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic. Fear of such interference led Dutch authorities to count paper ballots by hand to avoid possible Russian interference in the Netherlands’ General Election in March.
Last year, the campaign for France’s extreme right candidate, Marine Le Pen, secured a $30 million loan from a bank with ties to Putin’s government in order to finance a bid to soften her party’s image. And parties such as Golden Dawn in Greece and Lega Nord in Italy have similarly been identified as benefitting from Russian largesse, as well as secessionist movements in California, Texas and even the famous Brexit.
Russia has “provided money to help their causes through an international nonprofit called the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia,” Salon.com reported in December. “According to the group’s president, Alexander Ionov, direct governmental funds amount to 30 percent of its general budget.”
Meanwhile, a group of private citizens — the ideologically driven billionaire Mercer family — has funded “disruptor” campaigns directly via super PACs and campaign donations, and indirectly through media ownership and pro bono data analytics.
Headed by a computer scientist-turned-hedge-fund-manager named Robert Mercer, the family is a co-owner of the extreme right-wing media site Breitbart.com, and has poured millions into pro-Trump super PACs. The Mercers were also responsible for Trump bringing anti-establishment advisor Steve Bannon and spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway — a friend of daughter Rebekah Mercer — into the fold.
The Mercer family’s real specialty, though, is mining data on sites such as Facebook, and then manipulating voters via big data analytics and targeted attack ads. According to campaign filings, their firm Cambridge Analytica provided this service to the Trump campaign to the tune of $5 million — which was then paid by the Mercers’ own super PAC.
They also served as free consultants on the Brexit campaign, once again mining Facebook data to help the “leave” camp win over swing voters — a fact that the campaign failed to disclose in violation on of British election law.
Ultimately, both Russia and the Mercers share the same goal: political disruption. Both push anti-liberal “solutions” in response to voter frustration around the globe. It’s not a coincidence that the same types of candidates and movements are popping up in different parts of the world.
How to fight back
Neither Russia nor the Mercers would be successful, though, if voters weren’t buying what the anti-liberals are selling.
“What we’re learning is that authoritarian politicians have figured out how to achieve a balance between liberalism and illiberalism that keeps people satisfied,” Zakaria said in an interview with Vox.com in January. “If they can give enough bread and circus to the public, they can maintain a stable working majority buttressed by a certain degree of repression of the press and political opposition.”
The job then of ordinary concerned citizens is to work together to cut through the circus and focus on what really matters: demanding more than just bread crumbs and pushing for policies that will bring about real opportunity and equality.
This means fighting the underlying causes and challenging the people who exploit them — the Putin’s and Mercers of the world — for their own personal gain.
On the one hand it will involve identifying and changing the policies in place that are impeding progress worldwide. It will also mean looking at what has worked or what is working in various places, and determining how to adapt these success stories for other times and locations. Finally it will include advancing novel solutions from a diverse group of experts.
None of it will be possible though without strong democratic institutions and robust rule of law. Accordingly, rather than abandoning liberal ideals, now is the time to embrace them.
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